The Green Bag VOL. XVIII.
No. 8
BOSTON
AUGUST, 1906
CHRISTOPHER C. LANGDELL BY SAMUEL F. BATCHELDER AT the Harvard Law School in the late sixties things were going pretty com fortably. That great triumvirate, Parker, Parsons and Washburn, were still the in structors. One of them lectured for a couple of hours every day. The list of text-books they covered each half-year — some twentyfive or thirty in each course — was rather ap palling to a conscientious student who tried to read them all. Very few tried, and fewer succeeded. The lectures were quite enough. Such of the students as attended them and did not read a newspaper meanwhile might hear in a pleasant, informal way the rule of law on almost any given point. Such of them as attended, or at any rate paid their term-bills, for eighteen months, received the LL. B. as a sort of reward of constancy. To an occasionally expressed doubt of the actual legal ability represented by such a degree the answer was ready : "Can't you take the word of a gentleman that he has learned the law? " To the same effect was the weight of authority and respectable antiquity. There had been no advance since the sapient Dr. Johnson, a hundred years before, ob served, "that academical honors, or any others, should be conferred with exact pro portion to merit, is more than human judg ment or human integrity have given reason to expect. Perhaps degrees in universities cannot be better adjusted by any general rule than by the length of time passed in the public profession of learning."1 What matter if to the bulk of the legal profession these "graduates" were known as "Law School Pills"? What matter if the number i A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, p. 24-
of students, though fluctuating, had long averaged about one hundred and forty only? What if many of them were mere raw boys, with no college or other proper training for their work? What if the grotesque remains of the law library were little more than an open quarry whence any visitor might pur loin any volume he chose — provided he could find it? What if the new president's first visit to Dane Hall in 1869 was a nine days' wonder, almost an intrusion? Did not the fame of Story, Kent, and Greenleaf still give the School a national reputation? Had not Parsons also, and Washburn, made bril liant names as writers of text -books — those foundations of all law? Were not the lean years of the School during the war safely passed? All in all, things were going pretty comfortably. But comfortable days are fleeting, even in a law school. At the end of the decade Parsons, graceful lecturer, polished littera teur, full of years and honors, resigned. The chair founded forty years before by old Nathan Dane, whose desire for "the scien tific study of the law " had been so well forgotten, now stood vacant. What distin guished jurist could worthily fill it? Curi osity battled with astonishment when it was announced that on Jan. 6, 1870, the Corpora tion of the University, at the instance of President Eliot, had appointed Christopher C. Langdell Dane Professor of Law. . Who was he? Few could remember even the name. A searching of old college cata logues revealed it among the undergraduates in the sophomore class of 1848 and the junior class of 1849. Also he appeared to have been for three successive years, 1851
